Maximise road safety measures in rainy season

For the past few months there have been heavy downpours in Malaysia especially in the Klang Valley.

Due to the heavy rain, thunderstorm and lightning, there is a great risk for safety of road users that the authorities should monitor effectively.

Many traffic lights are not working, for example in Jalan Ampang heading to KLCC, Desa Pandan junction heading towards Ampang Hilir, Jalan 222, Petaling Jaya, and several other places.

Due to this, there are heavy crawls in such areas, with drivers fighting each other to find their way.

Some do not bother about the pedestrians on the road.

During such situations, it is important that the traffic police and police officers to be placed in these areas not only to control the traffic but to ensure the pedestrian lanes are also safe.

Due to heavy rain, the visibility is also reduced and the lane markings are not clear.

The white lanes, yellow lanes and other pedestrian lanes should be painted in such way that during night rain or bad weather conditions, these lanes can glow and the road users are able to see them clearly.

The road curbs are also not clear or poorly painted .They should be painted clearly to avoid cars or motorcyclists hitting the curbs.

Unfortunately on Malaysian roads, these lanes and curbs are often covered by dust, sand, water and many times the road users are not able to see them clearly.

The Department of Standards Malaysia has developed a Malaysian Standard (MS 164:2007) on Road Marking Paints -Specification (Third Version) which specifies requirements for road marking paints for use on bituminous traffic bearing surfaces.

But this standard at the moment is a voluntary standard.

The regulators should consider incorporating this into their regulations to make it a mandatory requirement to ensure quality of such road marking paints is not compromised.

Every year there is an increase of death and road accidents.

According to the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) In the year 2009, there were 6,745 deaths and in the year 2010, 6,872 deaths.

Total road accidents also registered an increase from 397,330 in 2009 to 414,421 in 2010.

It is important that the regulators to revise the safety standards ensure continuous and more effective monitoring to address these issues to ensure safety is put in place and the number of accidents can be minimised.

MOHANA PRIYA is from the Malaysian Association of Standards Users.

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